Letter: Pro-lifers should be working to change minds, not laws

Letter: Pro-lifers should be working to change minds, not laws

Pro-lifers shouldn’t be fighting for laws; they should be fighting to change people’s minds.

The 1968 Proclamation of Teheran declared that number and spacing of children should be determined by the parents. In the 45 years since this declaration, pro-life arguments have been focused in the same direction: to make it illegal.

Focusing on government officials to change things is a risky move for conservative minded citizens, and that’s where they are failing. Many more people can be reached by a conversation on the value of life than through writing bills, amendments and speeches.

To say that change only comes about with lawmaking is to disregard the concept of growth and change in a human being.

The Guttmacher Institute for Sexual and Reproductive Health reports that 22 percent of all pregnancy in America will end in an abortion. Of those abortions, roughly 60,000 of them per year were unsafe. These abortions were not out of hatred for children, but desperation.

The number of pro-choice voters who have said, “We are angry because we want access to safe abortions if necessary” far outweighs those who say, “We are angry because we want to kill babies.” That proves that the idea driving pro-choice legislation is to have the option to terminate a pregnancy should you need it.

The mindset that the only way to end abortion is to make it illegal is holding pro-lifers back from making any real difference.

America prides itself on being of the people, by the people, and for the people. Pro-life argument needs to focus more on that: “the people.”